Jupiter Farms Pilot Hailed As Hero After Crash-landing

A Palm Beach County pilot is being hailed as a hero after managing to crash-land his plane and rescue his two passengers.

One of the two women passengers remained hospitalized Tuesday night after Monday's crash near Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.

Mary Albury, 58, was listed in guarded condition at Memorial Regional Hospital, in Hollywood. Another crash survivor, her daughter, Deita Ruffelf, 28, was treated and released on Monday.

The two women, who live in the Bahamas, were en route to their home in a Piper Lance Turbo flown by their friend Monte Pollock, 42, of Jupiter Farms. The plane blew an engine shortly after takeoff and crash-landed in a canal in Dania Beach.

Pollock, who won praise from officials for his dramatic rescue of the women, was also treated and released from the hospital on Monday.

Pollock's Piper Lance Turbo blew an engine and went down just minutes after taking off on the flight to the Bahamas.

Pollock looked out the window and saw residential property on his left and right, then spotted a tiny water landing area between dozens of docked boats.

He picked his spot, then dove for a patch of trees and the water.

"It's just unbelievable how he threaded that spot so perfectly," Broward County sheriff's spokesman Kirk Englehardt said. "It's amazing nobody was killed."

After dropped into the canal, a bent wing had the plane's occupants locked inside as the plane submerged further.

Pollock tried the window, and it finally popped. He pulled Ruffelf out with him and sat her on the wing of the plane, which was out of the water. Then he headed back to get Albury.

The large woman was stuck. Pollock yanked a rear door off its hinges, but he couldn't free her from the submerged plane. Still holding his breath, he pushed her through the front, out the missing window and onto the wing.

But with fuel gushing out of the plane, it was in real danger of blowing up. Pollock went under again and shut off the Piper's electrical system and closed its fuel lines.

Within minutes, help arrived. Sheriff's deputies and two off-duty commercial airline pilots who witnessed the crash helped Pollock get the women onto a dock.

Then they yanked him out of the water and began praising what one pilot called a "Herculean" effort by the 160-pound pilot.

"That guy did everything right, exactly as you're supposed to in that type of situation," said Dan Brady, a pilot with Continental Airlines. "He was very cool, and all he was worrying about was the two women, even though he was hurting. What he did was incredible."

At the hospital, Pollock seemed as cool as he had been hours earlier. His girlfriend, Kimberly Paluska, didn't. She had just raced from West Palm Beach, where she works at the Clerk of Court's Office. She cried softly as they exchanged a long hug outside the emergency room.

"When you lose power on a plane, if you want to live to talk about it you have to do things right," Pollock said matter-of-factly. "A lot of things flash through your mind, and you have to stay calm or it's over.

"I wasn't going to land in a residential area, and I wanted the water because it wasn't as likely to blow up," he said. "I hit the trees and that helped us a lot, because they seemed to bend and just lay the plane in the water."

Pollock, a general contractor who works mostly around the beaches of Palm Beach County, downplayed his heroics and said he simply followed his training. Federal agencies are investigating.